


tactile

by viscrael



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pre-Recall, Pre-Relationship, Touch-Starved, like. Immediately pre-recall. as in a day after this recall happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 16:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11947926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: I do not think Omnics are supposed to ever feel touch-starved,Zenyatta told him once,but what we are and are not supposed to be or experience has never stopped us before. Trust me when I say this is not just me being kind. You think of me as selfless, but I’m embarrassed to say this is as much for me as it is for you.There is no need to be embarrassed,Genji had said immediately. It was important to him somehow that his friend knew there was nothing wrong or selfish about what he wanted.





	tactile

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again w/ the small and nonsensical genyatta fics whaddup
> 
> one of these days ill write a longer, more substantial thing for these 2. for now have disjointed thoughts and a fic that makes little sense

Morning light falls over the monastery, and slowly, everyone stirs to consciousness.

Genji is one of the first to wake, although this is less about his eagerness for being awake and more about how little he slept the night before. By the time he’d finally fallen into sleep, the sky was already beginning to lighten, chickens crowing their first morning calls. He couldn’t have been unconscious for longer than thirty minutes, he thinks.

Zenyatta wakes soon after, the lights on his forehead turning on slowly, and once he's up, he lets out an automated sigh as if to relieve pressure. His lights flicker a few times, something similar to a human blinking sleep out of their eyes. “Genji,” he says, folding his palms on in his hands.

“You are awake,” Genji says, watching the hands in his master’s lap, the wires connecting his palm and fingers that resemble tendons, dark and taut and efficient. They fold easily, and within a minute of waking up Zenyatta already looks put together, already at peace.

“And you,” he says.

“I have been so.”

“Did you sleep?”

Genji takes a moment too long to answer, and he can feel Zenyatta’s worry start to grow as he says, “Yes, a little.”

It isn’t a secret to Zenyatta why he hadn’t slept much, nor to anyone in the monastery, really. Genji has been here for close to two years now, and while his schedule regulated itself to something more diurnal a long time ago, and while he hasn’t had any out bursts in close to a year and a half, the others surely haven’t forgotten. Especially if they have caught on to Genji sneaking into Zenyatta’s chambers close to every night for the past six months, there’s no way they do not remember.

It’s more than a little embarrassing to have the whole community aware of your night terrors, but Genji knows it couldn’t be helped. And some of it he brought upon himself in the first few months he stayed here, so vehemently against the idea of healing or staying long-term at all.

“I see,” Zenyatta says. Outside, roosters crow, the noise finding its way into Zenyatta’s bedroom—well, almost  _their_ bedroom at this point. “I hope you slept well, then, for however few hours you were given.”

“Minutes,” Genji corrects half-heartedly.

Zenyatta pauses, and although he has no human face with which to show expressions, Genji can feel the way eyebrows would furrow if he had any to do that with. The way Omnics express themselves is different, focused more on tone and physical body language than facial expressions or contact; Genji is fluent in this language, after two years of teaching himself.

“Minutes,” Zenyatta repeats.

Genji nods. He sits across from his master with his knees folded under himself politely, his hands held loosely in his lap.

“You are not doing well,” Zenyatta says.

He thinks about lying—but Zenyatta knows better than that. Genji admits hesitantly, “No. I am not.”

“What troubles you, my student?” Zenyatta unfolds his hands as he moves up from his seat on his cot, scooting over to make room for two people, and he pats the newly empty spot next to him.

Genji takes the invitation. Brighter light filters into their room through the open window, casting beams of yellow on the floor, and he can just barely feel the warmth of the sun from where he sits, the beams splayed around the room. It combats the chill coming in from the snow-covered ground outside. The Omnics here leave the windows open more days than not; its purpose has something to do with spiritual energy, Zenyatta explained, and since they don’t feel temperature as easily or extremely as humans, they don’t have to worry about leaving it open during the winter months or staying out in the heat during the summer. Genji is probably the only one bothered at all by the constantly open windows.

“Please, explain,” Zenyatta invites. “You haven’t been sleeping well the past few nights, I have noticed. Even when you sleep in my room for as long as you can make it, you still toss and turn or barely find rest at all. Does something bother you so badly that it’s messing with your daily schedule once again?”

The “once again” might be referring to Genji’s past trauma, keeping him hostage to the conscious hours. But it’s not that. He shakes his head. “It is…nothing tangible, I’m afraid.”

“A hunch?”

“Just a feeling,” he agrees. “That something is going to happen soon, very soon.”

“I see.” Zenyatta tilts his head as he takes the answers in, looking thoughtful. “A good or bad thing?”

“I don’t know,” Genji admits.

“You only know it is happening,” Zenyatta sums up. Both of them are firm believers in coincidence and gut feelings and every day premonitions that others might not be aware of yet. Not every monk here believes the hunches Genji has to be true, but he doesn’t care so long as they don’t discredit him or find some reason to ridicule Zenyatta because of it. Zenyatta’s relationship is strained with some of the other monks already; he doesn’t want to be another reason for their bond to crumble. And either way, Zenyatta doesn’t deserve any ridicule.

He continues, “That _is_ troubling,” and the rooster outside finally stops his calling.

It’s five A.M. and Genji fell asleep around four, if he can remember correctly. A wave of fatigue hits him all at once, and he rubs his eyes to brush it from himself as best as he can. It doesn’t seem to work, however. Zenyatta watches his failed attempts.

“We should have about another hour before we are requested for breakfast,” Zenyatta says. He moves until they are pressed shoulder to shoulder on the cot, and he gestures to the now-free space for him to lay down on. “If you try, could you find it in yourself to sleep that hour away?”

Genji blinks, but nods. “I can.”

“Then try. I’ll wake you when we are finally wanted with the others downstairs,” Zenyatta assures. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“…You are sure?”

“Of course. You should sleep in as long as you can.”

Genji isn’t wearing his mask right now—he never wears it to sleep—so he knows Zenyatta sees when he sucks in a small breath in surprise, and then release it slowly again in gratitude a moment later. “Alright. If you'll allow it.”

He thinks about laying down the way Zenyatta had been sleeping last night, but halfway through getting himself situated, he moves back up. He leans back into Zenyatta’s lap, laying his head on cold, folded metal legs. This is not the first time they’ve sat this way, but it’s one of the first times Genji has done so with the intent of actually sleeping.

“Oh,” Zenyatta says, sounding almost pleasantly surprised. Without pause, his hands go to brush through Genji’s dark, tangled hair. Genji can’t deny how good it feels to have another person touch him for once. Other than Zenyatta (seeing as they have found themselves in positions like this more often as the days pass and they grow closer here), the last person to touch him without the intent to harm was a one-time lover he’d had prior to dying, one he can barely remember the face of, let alone their touch. Any intimate contact from Zenyatta is the only contact he has had in years. He cherishes every opportunity he is given for proximity, and cherishes even more the immediacy with which Zenyatta is willing to provide it.

_I do not think Omnics are supposed to ever feel touch-starved,_ Zenyatta told him once, _but what we are and are not supposed to be or experience has never stopped us before. Trust me when I say this is not just me being kind. You think of me as selfless, but I’m embarrassed to say this is as much for me as it is for you._

_There is no need to be embarrassed_ , Genji had said immediately, not because the rest of what Zenyatta admitted wasn’t important, but because it was important to him somehow that his friend knew there was nothing wrong or selfish about what he wanted. Zenyatta may have been much more enlightened in many ways that Genji, but as an Omnic, there were things about physical relationships and the need for touch that he could still learn from Genji.

This was one way to go about teaching—this casual intimacy; the way that the moment they were in the private of Zenyatta’s chambers, they seemed to fall over each other into piles of limbs and chaste touch; the tendon wires pressed to Genji’s synthetic palm and, sometimes, even what was left of his one, human arm, when he felt like being infinitely more vulnerable. Those times, Zenyatta thanked him for his openness, for his willingness to expose that part of himself to someone else.

It felt silly to say, but Genji thought of the same sentiment that Zenyatta had told him—that it was not a selfless act. That it was as much for himself as it was for the other.

“Rest,” Zenyatta says now, his metal fingers massaging gently into Genji’s scalp, and the tactile part of it cancels out any discomfort from Zenyatta’s perpetually cold body.

“Don't worry. I am,” Genji assures.

He slips finally into sleep to the sound of Zenyatta’s metallic laugh, like brass bells ringing.

**Author's Note:**

> and then winston was like "hello every1 pls join overwatch again" and genji was like :O


End file.
